Now consider your reality as already augmentée. The game is now simple : bend over every human activity and flatten it to “just what it is”. De-augment it. Diminish it to its reality. C’est le contraire !

Then you can categorize things.

Leasures which are just dragging-moving people from A to B (climbing mountains, running in stadiums, Tour de France), or worse, from A to A and every activity “moving in circles” (racing cars, haha). In fact, every sport seems suddenly a bit stupid, and you don’t understand why some guys are throwing balls and run around – in baseball or football. Whatever. If you kitesurf or swim in a ABABABA trajectory you suddenly stop, realising the nonsensicall of doing “this” (jumping around on the beach or moving your arms and legs in the water to go nowhere). Etc

The kitsch loses immediatly all funny taste, it’s becoming what it is : an ugly boring old snap reality. Religion becomes strange words and activities (all the ritual things) towards a silent “God” (does he talk to you ?). Every picture you’ll see for advertising, with a top-model, will have the taste of what it is : fake smiles and words trying to sale you bouleshite. Etc.

You got it, I know : just flatten things, kill the augmented reality, look at what it is. Tout simplement.

Consequences : No movies any more. There is no Braveheart, just an Australian actor running in the grass. No novels either, because you now feel the writer “inventing” little stories to distract you.

Tool : Well it’s just a gaaaaame. If you do this all the time you’ll become like Shopenhauer or Cioran. Don’t do this. Use it when necessary. You’ll suddenly find time to do really simple things you can not de-augment, like eating un bon cassoulet or caressing your girlfriend’s legs. What ?

Astronautes et cosmonautes, when they are over our planet Earth, have a SHOCK.

You know what kind of shock ? They watch the Earth and well, they see something. In fact they do not see something :

“Les frontières n’existent pas”

No borders on our planet. No boundaries at all ! They are only in our heads.

Borders are full of questions. What do you find ON the border ? Checkpoints ? Holes ? Paths ? Gates ? Is a border a line, or a geographic large place (say : no man’s land ?) ? If it’s a large border, is it a whole territory ? Is a border closed or opened ?

Can a border separate different nature-of-things ? After all, ice could be the border between air and water ? Are borders imposed ? Moving ? Inherited ? Natural (river) or built (wall) ? What happens on the border ? Discovery ? Désillusion ?

What happens at the cross of A, B, and C territories ? What are mental borders ? When do we say “Tu vas trop loin” : you go too far ? And what if you cross that border ? Haha ! You’ll see… Tu verras, mon petit.

Tool 1 : It’s always funny to play with a simple concept and to apply what we know to other territories. Where are the borders in the house of a loving couple ? Between an employee and his manager ? What are the way to pass a closed one ? Are there some spécifiques “borders activities” ?

Tool 2 : No boundaries on Earth. These are all given, provided, confered, inside-of-heads things. Apply on some other borders, juste pour s’amuser…

For example, to say “92” you say Ninety Two and that’s done. Good. Belgium people say Nonante Deux and it’s the same. But in France we say “Quatre-vingt douze”, which is complety twisted, something like “4 X 20 + 12”, which is correct, but, you know, hahahahaha.

For example, when you say “Last week”, we say “La semaine dernière”, but also “Il y a huit jours”, which means “Eight days ago”.

What ?!

“It’s not eight days, but seven, so why do we say eight ?”. I don’t know. Sorry. Plus : for two weeks we say “Il y a quinze jours”, which means “Fifteen days ago” : this is just wrong. Well…

There’s no tool here. Just an idea : if you want to learn french, prepare yourself to wander with a huge question mark above your head. A blue, white, red one maybe.

Today I bought a bad painting, secondhand, in the street. It’s just… ordinaire. Nothing really surprising in the colors, the texture, the light, nothing. The flowers : no. I just saw it and wanted to take a picture, in the street, for Instagram, when I saw something. My eyebrows moved upstairs, haha. Up.

Climbing Eyebrows Criteria…

Well, I bought it ! 3 € only. Let’s say $3.40. I brought it home and wondered about her expression (Thoughtful because of the past, the future ? Tea’s cold ? A decision to make ?) and the source of the cold expression I find (eyebrows ?) for a long moment.

Since this I wonder. In the different worlds of Art : la musique, les films, l’architecture, what’s happening when we are touched and moved by a single, a tiny element of a bothering piece of… ok, Art ? A phrase in a mendelssohn sonata ? A ray of light in an ugly church ? A miracle scene in a B-movie ? A few words of magic in a bad poem ?

Lever : What is the surprise here ? How does it work in our brain ? What kind of struggle do we fight ?

Tool : What if we choose méthodiquement to DIG into a hangar of pigshit (well, with good protection), just to find gold nuggets ?